Propositions

Man is a dreary proposition. He's a lost form searching for function in a world that does not and never will know him. He wanders the streets of cities looking for something or the other but he will never find it—he never has.

On a wet Sunday night, I was driving home after my customary dinner at The Thatched Hut. Stuck in a traffic jam and the rain coming down harder than ever, I had nothing better to do than look out my window at a world that couldn't not be wet on a stormy night. A bus pulled over at its stop and a few people alighted. An old woman firmly gripping a knitting kit, her husband trying to keep up with her while trying to unfurl an umbrella, a prostitute whose make-up was already streaming down her cheeks—she could've been crying, and a middle-aged man carrying a bag of groceries and walking while typing something into his phone.

A bright red light caught my attention; the traffic was clearing and I began to move. Why was the prostitute crying? An affair of love? Interesting as that thought was, I realized it held no potential whatsoever beyond its curious context. Why did the crying prostitute have to be an odd proposition? That she fell in love wasn't so simple anymore—and I strongly suspected those of us who cried "Love is for everyone".

These were the men who were looking for love when it was already everywhere, and that they were looking for it meant they were looking for something specific. The man who'd made her cry could easily have been such a man, hurting from the love of a woman who had bedded other men simply because it was the matter of trades and a hungry stomach. He couldn't stand the severely non-physical love of a woman. It was strange to him, scared him, and he pushed her away.

Would she know love again? I was and am in no position to tell. Why couldn't the old woman care about the rain? I was sure her old husband was still trying to get the lever to unlock so he could open the damned umbrella. I was sure for some reason that he was only trying to look busy; men usually had a penchant for mechanisms capable of confusing most women. The umbrella would've been open much earlier if not for his avoidance of some conversation.

What could've happened? An affair, again? With the prostitute?! Unlikely. There was nothing loveable about him, for one. An inexplicable expenditure? Perhaps. As a man moves on from one era and into another, his first attempt at reorienting his senses is to coax something into obedience—he must possess something tractable. Growing up, it's a bike, a girl, a car, a job, an office, tenure, companionship, recognition, fame, pension, vacation and a death that kills him in his sleep.

The old man must have just found something he liked, something he could grip while his marriage slipped through his fingers. I wouldn't be surprised if it was the umbrella he'd invested in.

That was the lot. I wasn't much better off myself: an out-of-work writer is a nobody. I turned away from the window and just stared at the road the rest of my way home. The rain was whittling down already and the ripples were barely visible outside the umbra of hundreds of headlights.

I recalled then something I did when it rained when I was much younger, perhaps a boy of 20. I used to look at the sky and try to focus on one droplet as it came down, and I used to follow it with a keen gaze all the way to its demise on the road below my balcony. And then, I used to look up again, trying to spot my next target. I can't remember anymore why I enjoyed doing that boring exercise again and again, but I still did try to look up through the windscreen for a raindrop. I couldn't find many, and even when I did, I couldn't track it all the way. It was just the knowledge of tremendous rainclouds above my head and the firm ground on which I drove. Everything in between I took for granted, and that was something I knew I wouldn't like to be told ever.

The road was now empty—not a vehicle in sight. Driving slowly, I turned my eyes to the other side of the road. Outside a butcher's stall, a crowd waited in silence for their portions. On a piece of slate hung from the wall, "Fresh meat" was inscribed in chalk, sheltered from the past downpour by a shallow parapet that leaned over it.

Further ahead, another bus was pulling away from its stop, getting back on the road, and two boys were doggedly chasing it. They had backpacks strapped to their backs—students, getting back from classes, going by the rest of their attire. For a moment, I considered pulling over and offering them a lift, but decided against it when all those rainy nights that I'd spent waiting for the next bus to arrive came to mind. I hadn't enjoyed those nights one bit but they did teach me the value of punctuality... and how nasty colds could get.

I continued driving. A couple was walking on the sidewalk, outside a mall, holding hands while she pulled her scarf tighter around her face. Anonymity was hard to come by in cities such as this: all I had to do was walk up to them and ask for a light, and they'd already have a pretty good impression of me, my habits, my life. It was simple, really. I was and am a man in this city.